re equally disquieting with real wants: the Roman, who
wept at the death of his lamprey, felt the same degree of sorrow that
extorts tears on other occasions.

Inordinate desires, of whatever kind, ought to be repressed upon yet a
higher consideration; they must be considered as enemies not only to
happiness but to virtue. There are men, among those commonly reckoned
the learned and the wise, who spare no stratagems to remove a competitor
at an auction, who will sink the price of a rarity at the expense of
truth, and whom it is not safe to trust alone in a library or cabinet.
These are faults, which the fraternity seem to look upon as jocular
mischiefs, or to think excused by the violence of the temptation: but I
shall always fear that he, who accustoms himself to fraud in little
things, wants only opportunity to practise it in greater; "he that has
hardened himself by killing a sheep," says Pythagoras, "will with less
reluctance shed the blood of a man."

To prize every thing according to its _real_ use ought to be the aim of
a rational being. There are few things which can much conduce to
happiness, and, therefore, few things to be ardently desired. He that
looks upon the business and bustle of the world, with the philosophy
with which Socrates surveyed the fair at Athens, will turn away at last
with his exclamation, "How many things are here which I do not want!"

No. 120. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1753.

_--Ultima semper
Expectanda dies homini: dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet._ OVID. Met. Lib. iii. 135.

But no frail man, however great or high,
Can be concluded blest before he die. ADDISON.

The numerous miseries of human life have extorted in all ages an
universal complaint. The wisest of men terminated all his experiments in
search of happiness, by the mournful confession, that "all is vanity;"
and the ancient patriarchs lamented, that "the days of their pilgrimage
were few and evil."

There is, indeed, no topick on which it is more superfluous to
accumulate authorities, nor any assertion of which our own eyes will
more easily discover, or our sensations more frequently impress the
truth, than, that misery is the lot of man, that our present state is a
state of danger and infelicity.

When we take the most distant prospect of life, what does it present us
but a chaos of unhappiness, a confused and tumultuous scene of labour
and contest, disappointment and defeat? If